flash when breaching the light barrier

[macspeedy]

so if we experience a sonic boom when travelling past the speed of sound do we encounter a flash of light when we pass the speed of light or do we just pass out and die

[fo3nix]

Nothing can exceed the speed of light, so the question is null.

[jake-the-peg]

You're being a bit sloppy with the physics here guys. Nothing with any mass can travel at the speed of light in a vacuum

It was for a while thought possible that you might find particles travelling faster than light and they were given the name Tachyons but nobody ever found any so it's assumed they don't exist.

But that's another topic.

The speed of light in a material such as air or glass or water is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. Particles can travel faster than the speed of light in a material and when they do there is indeed light given off.

This is Cherenkov radiation and is resposible for the blue glow in some reactors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiati on

[chakka35]

The first part of the question is rather clumsily put anyway. 'We' do not experience a sonic boom when travelling supersonically. It is the people on the ground who hear the boom shortly after the aircraft has passed. It is the reason why Concorde could never fly supersonically over inhabited land and was therefore a commercial flop.

[macspeedy]

i thought concord was used for international flights like over the atlantic to america it was pulled also as the bottom was not enforced enough to prevent debris from damaging the fuselage causing everyone on board to suffer burns before they got on holiday via a aircraft fuel explosion

[chakka35]

When you say 'like over the Atlantic' you mean 'only over the Atlantic'. Concorde could not fly anywhere else because there is no equivalent open stretch of water which is economically viable. The Pacific has too many islands between the US west Coast and Japan; the Indian Ocean is clear open water but leads nowhere important that is not inland.
The incident you mention was the cause of Concorde's demise. Its economic failure had been evident from the beginning, which is why all the world's airlines cancelled the options they had on her.

[fo3nix]

jake-the-peg's entirely correct. For some reason I quickly answered the question thinking only about cases in vacuums. Apologies.

[macspeedy]

jake the peg thats really interesting thank you for that information

[naomi24]

Concorde wasn't restricted to trans-Atlantic routes - it regularly flew to Bahrain too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stori es/september/26/newsid_2539000/2539049.stm

Hello Chakka, we meet again. Any hope of you coming back to R&S?

[chakka35]

Yes, naomi. I'll have to get the atlas out and work out how it got to Bahrain without flying over inhabited land or islands. I popped back to R&S briefly yesterday purely to answer Theland's enquiry after me. It seemed only courteous.
The mention of my letter in The Times will give away my identity - not that that will mean anything to anyone.

[tompaine]

Concord to bahrain was subsonic.

[chakka35]

Thanks, tompaine. Gets me off that hook!